They laughed at a few of Ian's jokes as Hailey retold them. Alden got furious at Weston right alongside her. When she told him about what had happened to Jessica, he cried. She was a good storyteller, and he was so caught up he didn't realize there was someone else listening in until Hailey finally caught him up to the day they'd met.

  "Miss Winscombe," Boris said gently from the doorway. They both jumped—or rather, they leaned up suddenly in their beds.

  "...How much did you hear, Boris?" Hailey asked shamefacedly.

  "Quite a lot, in fact. Rest assured, there is no one else nearby—not even my young grey-eyed friend." Boris shrugged. "I am an old man and could easily grow senile and forget the whole tale, if you wish."

  "I… no, you don't need to do that." Hailey grimaced. "I didn't know you were there."

  "I learned long ago that silence is among the most useful tools we have ever discovered." Boris sat down on a stool near her bed. "May I check your bandages? I apologize for not asking before, but it was an emergency and you could not answer me at the time."

  "That's… yeah, that's fine. Thank you, by the way," she added. Alden turned over to stare at the wall while Boris lifted her sheets.

  "You are on the way to recovery, but I would not advise walking for the time being, or attempting to use your left arm," Boris said a few minutes later. "Now, the young man." Alden rolled back over, and Boris checked on him as well. "You should be fine soon enough. I believe you have a concussion, though I do not have the sophisticated tools to accurately diagnose one. You were thrown quite far from the building headfirst. It is a miracle that she caught you."

  "She meaning Grey-eyes?"

  Boris hesitated for only an instant. "Yes, her," he replied—but Alden could tell he'd been about to say something else at first. "Is there anything I can get the two of you? I'm afraid I don't have much here at the store, but if you are hungry or thirsty, I can provide that much at least."

  "A little to eat would be great, yeah," Hailey said. Alden agreed. Boris went through one of the cabinets and found a few boxes of crackers. They looked old, but Alden was surprised to find them tasting fresh, if a little bland. Boris inclined his head slightly, then retreated from the room while they ate.

  "Is he like a spy or something?" Alden asked quietly.

  "He just snuck into his secret medical room hidden in his store without either of us noticing and speaks a bunch of languages perfectly, and he's in a dead-end town like this for no apparent reason." Hailey laughed. "He's probably a spy."

  "Don't say it so loud!" Alden hissed.

  "Boris is a good guy. If he's spying, it's for good people." Hailey started munching down the crackers. "What about you, though? Are you a spy?"

  "What?"

  "If you were a spy, who would you be spying for? Where are you from?"

  Her line of questioning was strange, but it ended up leading them both to sharing their own personal lives in great detail. Hailey just brought that out in people, it seemed. She shared a bit about herself, growing up in the suburb mess between Seattle and Tacoma.

  She'd lead a charmed life, passing through high school with flying colors and with the option of hundreds of colleges open to her. But she'd chosen Rallsburg, to her mother's dismay, and she'd decided once she arrived in town that she was going to do a complete one-eighty on her former life and become an outgoing social queen and pass all her classes with flying colors.

  "How do you even manage that?" Alden asked. He always felt overwhelmed by his classes already. He'd been in most of the advanced classes offered at his school, but he felt like he was barely hanging on.

  "By doing nothing else." She shrugged. "I was either with friends partying all the time, and if I wasn't then I was inside studying. That was my whole life up until we found magic."

  "It sounds exhausting."

  "Honestly, yeah, it really was." Hailey smiled. "I was way happier in the long run spending time with just five instead. Those were real friendships."

  In return, Alden told her all about his life before Rallsburg—which in retrospect was a lot less interesting than her own. He'd gotten solid grades, but nothing extraordinary. He'd never played on any teams, or joined any clubs, or done a whole lot of anything really. When he wasn't at school, he was at home reading, playing games, or watching TV.

  "Guess the most interesting thing about me was that I used to make little models of things from books I read. Like, if something was described in a lot of detail, I'd try to make it in the real world."

  "Make it out of what?" Hailey asked.

  "Clay, Play-dough, pencils and folded paper, board game pieces. Anything I had sitting around. I sometimes would get really into a piece and actually plan it out on paper, then put it together with clay and burn it solid, but that was pretty rare. Usually I just made them while I was bored and needed something to fidget with."

  "Still, that's pretty cool. I was always horrible at art." Hailey grinned. "Makes drawing stuff out for Jess to understand super hard. One time, she looked at one of my drawings, which was supposed to be an offer to grill some chicken for dinner that night, and she—"

  A phone rang, piercing the quiet sanctuary they'd built up. It took a few seconds for Alden to realize that it was his phone. He hadn't heard it once since he'd arrived in Rallsburg. It had only been used once. He'd practically forgotten it existed. He reached up and awkwardly grabbed it from the pocket of his jacket.

  "It's my sister," Alden said, with a twinge of confusion. "Why is she calling? Why not a text?"

  "You gonna answer it?" Hailey asked.

  "I don't think she's ever called anyone in her life, not even Mom," Alden said. He flicked the screen. "Hi, Meg."

  "It's about time! I was scared to death!" Margaret belted. She always practically shouted into the phone, like she thought the mic would make her too quiet to hear. Probably why everyone tries to avoid calling her, Alden mused, holding the phone a few more inches away from his ear.

  "Uhh, what? Why would you be scared?" Hailey gave him a questioning glance. He shrugged.

  "You're still in that town, right? Rallsburg?"

  "Yeah?" He had told Margaret where he was going, in case his parents asked.

  He didn't have a bad relationship with them, but it was certainly a passive relationship. They provided for him and they asked for updates on how he was doing, but beyond that they may as well have lived in separate houses. He loved them, of course, but they weren't close. Meg was the only one he ever really talked to at home—and that usually involved less bonding and more ragging on her to do her chores or clean up after herself, or getting nagged about the same in reverse.

  "There's rioting and stuff. People are getting hurt."

  "There's rioting?" Alden asked, sitting straight up in bed. The adrenaline spike overrode the pain in his shoulder. He looked out the door, but all he could see were the drawn curtains over the blown out windows and the shattered door-frame. "I'm putting you on speaker, Meg. I have a friend with me. Where did you hear that? I don't see anything."

Stolen story; please report.

  "It was on some stream. I don't even know why I was following this person, I've never heard of them. I saw a popup that they were live and I was bored so I clicked on it." Meg's voice was tinny and hard to hear, but they were both hanging onto every word. "Zack, I saw some girl almost get her head cut off with an axe. Then she threw a fireball back in the guy's face."

  "What did she look like?" Hailey asked anxiously.

  "Who's the girl, Zack?" Meg asked with a suspicious tone.

  "Nevermind, Meg. Just tell us, please," Alden replied.

  "She had bright silver hair and was super short. The guy was huge and had a big thick beard. Like, super stereotypical lumberjack."

  "Yeah, we know her," Alden said. He looked at Hailey, who had a grim expression. They both knew what that meant.

  "Meg, is it still going?" Hailey asked.

  "No, whoever was filming dropped their phone and ran. It was looking at dirt for a bit and then it just cut out. I think someone probably stepped on it." Meg paused. "There's like, a movie filming out there or something, right? Special effects and shit?"

  "Don't swear," Alden replied automatically. "How many people were watching it?"

  "Like zero? I dunno, I was kinda flipping out over the action there."

  Alden had to get as much information out of his sister while he could. It would be important that everyone knew they'd been caught on camera. Cinza doing magic and fighting with Robert, probably. By Margaret's description, it sounded pretty clear that most of Cinza's group had been filmed with clear faces, and with more than a few different spells tossed about. It'd be very difficult to pass it off as a fake by his guess.

  "That's all I remember. What are you doing in that town, Zack?" Margaret asked.

  "If I tell you, do you promise to keep it a secret?" Alden asked. Hailey waved her arms wildly at Alden trying to stop him. He tapped mute on the phone. "What?"

  "You shouldn't tell her," Hailey hissed, even though it was muted.

  "If I don't, she's gonna start telling everyone she knows about that video."

  "It was already streamed. Even if only ten people saw it, it'll spread. A full-blown riot in a town this small is news." Hailey shook her head. "Best case, they investigate when they can and we've already cleaned up the mess, and the humans don't learn anything."

  "...Right." Alden didn't like lying to his sister, but he convinced himself it was for her own good. He took a second to prepare his story, then unmuted the phone. "It's for a movie. I got a part as an extra, but it's supposed to be a secret so no one swarms the set."

  "You're not bullshitting me?" Meg asked.

  "No. And stop swearing."

  "Oh, shut up. Mom's not around." Meg sighed audibly. "As long as you're safe, then."

  "Yeah, all good."

  "Someone's gonna get fired for that stream though," Hailey added.

  "Sucks for them. Talk to you later Zack." Meg hung up, and Alden let out a huge sigh of relief.

  "She bought it then?" Hailey asked.

  "Probably."

  "You'd better hope she did," interjected Lily. She'd appeared at the doorway, giving them both another shock. From a glance, it was definitely Lily though—her demeanour and tone were totally distinct from Kendra, even if their appearances were indistinguishable.

  "Would you people stop doing that?" Hailey muttered.

  "If she starts talking, we're all bollocksed." Lily limped into the room, wearing a makeshift splint on one leg.

  "We're probably screwed either way," Rika added, following her into the room. Rika was sporting a bandage around her head along with several over her arm. Her left eye was blackened and bruised and she winced with every movement of her chest. "Like Hales said, it's news. It's gonna spread."

  "So what do we do?" Alden asked.

  "Fuck if I know. I'm getting out of this fucking town."

  Alden was taken aback. "You're not gonna help?"

  "Help what? Omega's gonna kill them, or Rachel's gonna win. This is a battle of people who actually give a fuck, and I currently give zero fucks about society or world peace or any of that shit." Rika shook her head. "Coming here was a mistake."

  "Then why did you come?" Hailey asked. "If you couldn't care less about Rachel or any of us, why'd you come back?"

  "Told you, I'm trying to find my dad. But since Will's working for me now and the Cockney Wonder Twins were lying about their sources, I'm getting the feeling I should just move on."

  Lily frowned. "I'm from Westminster."

  "Whatever."

  "I thought Rachel was your friend," Alden said. "You're just gonna leave her?"

  "Dude, Rachel tried to get me kicked out of the goddamn country. You call that a friend?"

  "She was trying to protect you."

  "I can protect my own fucking self, thanks. I'm surprised you're trying to push for staying, Alzack. This place fucked you six ways to Sunday too and you haven't even been here a week."

  "What?"

  "Tell him," Rika asked, nodding at Lily.

  Lily's eyebrows narrowed. "You overheard?"

  She shrugged. "You guys aren't that observant. If you're gonna be sharing deep dark secrets, you should probably pay attention to the bedroom door."

  "Tell me what?" Alden asked, getting impatient.

  "The gaps in your memory. They were magically formed, and in a method that's not reversible." Lily paused. Her voice slipped towards Kendra's typical inflections as she explained. "You don't need to worry about a hidden foe, and from what we can surmise, it's not a spell that can be cast on anyone who has been awakened. You are safe from further meddling, at least in this particular approach."

  "So what happened to my sibling?" Alden asked.

  Lily shook her head. "We don't know."

  Hailey frowned. She tried to lean up in her bed, but coughed and fell back again. "That's it? You didn't find anything else?"

  "Whoever did this was incredibly thorough. The envelope that Zack gave us was a fluke, most likely forgotten because it had no real identifying marks. Granted, we've been a little busy this week and haven't given it a proper thorough investigation, but I doubt we'll uncover any further evidence or clues."

  Alden fell back against the wall with a thud. His entire mission in coming to the town, the only reason he'd even bothered to get on the train in the first place, had just come to a sudden abrupt halt.

  "There's more than that though," Hailey said slowly. "Zack, I think it did more than just wipe away your sibling."

  "What?" He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. What else did I lose?

  "We've been talking this whole time and you never once mentioned a single friend. You don't seem like the loner type at all to me," she added apologetically. "You threw yourself into a brand new town and made a half-dozen friends in days. So there's no way you don't have any back home, right?"

  Alden shook his head. "I don't, really. I mean. I never really have…" he trailed off. More snippets of memory were coming back to him. Not of any friends, but of odd phone calls and texts he hadn't understood. He'd hung up or blocked more than a few of them, assuming they were wrong numbers. Now, knowing what had been cast on him, he realized what he'd inadvertently done.

  "Oh shit…" Rika murmured.

  Panic was beginning to rise in Alden's chest. His heart was pounding and his vision felt dramatically sharper. His mind was going a mile a minute but couldn't settle on any single topic or any single memory. "I— what did— I don't—" he stammered.

  "Alden, calm down." Rika landed on the bed next to him and grabbed his shoulders. She stared him directly in the eyes. "Calm. Down."

  "What did they do to me?" Alden shouted in her face.

  "Calm the fuck down!" Rika shouted back. Alden was shaking in her grip. Breaths came in short gasps. "It's going to be okay."

  "How can any of this be okay?"

  "I don't fucking know, all right?" Rika shook her head. "I don't know how any of this works either."

  Hailey spoke up from the other bed. "You're having a panic attack. Just keep breathing. Everyone in this room is on your side. It's going to be okay, just keep breathing."

  Alden shook his head. He was still trying to talk, but words were coming out in single syllables and short bursts that made no sense. All he could do was think about how much of his memory was gone and who had done it. He finally managed to choke out a sentence after a few minutes of slowly diminishing hysteria.

  "This isn't fun anymore."

  Rika's eyes got wide for a second, then fiercely narrowed. "You thought this was going to be fun? Magic isn't a fucking game, Alden. People are dying out there."

  "Rika, stop, you're not helping—" Hailey started, but Rika's voice rose to drown her out. She stood up from the bed to tower over Alden.

  "Grow the fuck up, Alden. You've had something fucking terrible happen to you, and now you've got to deal with it. Welcome to the shitty-ass world."

  A phone started buzzing. Lily withdrew it from her bag and answered. The entire room fell eerily silent, with Rika's words still hanging in the air. Alden was rocking back and forth in place on the bed, feeling utterly terrified. He was barely paying attention, and missed the entire phone conversation until Lily finally hung up, her eyes wide.

  "Omega attacked Will," she reported in a whisper.

  "Fuck!" Rika screamed. She turned and ran out the door heedless of her injuries. Lily watched her go, clearly wishing she could follow on her leg.

  Hailey finally managed to sit up. "How bad?"

  "He's alive, but it's bad. They think Omega deliberately left him alive." Lily shook her head in dismay. "No one's safe anymore."

  Alden stood up while the two of them kept talking. He wasn't listening anymore. To his surprise, he barely felt injured, except for the still faintly stinging cut on his shoulder. His mind was on autopilot.

  It was about thirty five miles to the nearest town, if he remembered right. Forty at the most. It would be a long run, but he could probably make it. He had some food in his backpack and he could grab more from Rika's apartment before he left. It was warm enough at night that he didn't need to worry about freezing.

  Ignoring the cries of alarm from Lily and Hailey, Alden bolted from the room. He took off at a sprint through the oppressive darkness of the unlit town. There was enough moonlight to tell where he was going, but the darkness wasn't what terrified him. It was the visions of monsters growing out of the floor. Even worse, it was the idea that even his own mind could no longer be trusted.

  Alden ran, trying to flee something he couldn't possibly escape from. The dark night swallowed him up, like a grinning shadowy monster eager to devour its hapless prey.